


A Tricky Thing

by EbonyBlack



Category: Avatar (TV), Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Blindness, Gen, Toph and Zuko Are Somtimes Secretly the Same Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyBlack/pseuds/EbonyBlack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was his hair that had kept her from noticing. Hair was always a tricky thing. It wasn’t really solid, but it was still there, and a lot of times it was all wispy and piecey, and it just whipped around in the wind too much. And it made things all blurry...</p><p>In which Toph can't really see Zuko's face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tricky Thing

It was his hair that had kept her from noticing. Hair was always a tricky thing. It wasn’t really solid, but it was still there, and a lot of times it was all wispy and piecey, and it just whipped around in the wind too much. And it made things all blurry. 

It wasn’t that she couldn’t see his face. Because of course she could, she was the world’s greatest earthbender after all, and don’t you forget it. It’s just that the image wasn’t as sharp in her head. His bangs almost always fell down past his eyes, and they would sort of swallow up his features: his strong brow, his pointed nose. To her, they were just a brow and just a nose. Pretty unremarkable. Almost indistinguishable.

Aang was easy. He didn’t have any hair, problem solved. And Katara and Sokka kept their hair tied back, so that wasn’t a problem either. Suki wore her hair down, but at least she kept it out of her face. For the most part, it was usually tucked back behind her ears. 

So, it was only Zuko who kept the details of his face curtained to her. But then again, she guessed he kept his face curtained to everyone. Maybe they could sort of see through the hair, that their sight of him was clearer than her’s. They probably could – if the hair only blurred her image then it didn’t completely cover his face. Not really at least, not like a mask would. She didn’t know. She wasn’t really sure how the whole vision thing worked. 

At least their eyes took constant pictures though, so they all must have known what he looked like. But she couldn’t get that. Even if she stretched her whole body down on the earth, she couldn’t get that steady stream of vision. She had to send out a vibration if she wanted an image. And then she had to wait for it. For like, a tenth of a second, but still. That’s why she liked fidgeting. Tapping her fingers, stomping her feet, back and forth. It gave her automatic images, more consistent sight. Still, she seemed to always miss the few times his hair brushed completely out of his face, and it must have happened sometimes, even if just for a tenth of a second. Apparently, she always tapped at the wrong tenth of a second. Or maybe at the right one, but by the time the image formed in her head, it was over, and his hair was back in place. 

She hadn’t thought much of it when she first met him. Then again, at the time he’d been the unknown enemy – the subject of her friends’ tales of dangerous encounters with a mad prince. The son of the Firelord. And he’d been on his hands and knees, begging to be taken prisoner, and he’d acted so pathetic that Toph was suddenly half convinced that her friends had made it all up, in some sort of sick, long-running joke. That, or they'd been total wimps before she’d joined the gang and toughened them up. So yeah, when she’d first met him, there’d been bigger things to think about and more important things to do. 

And then they sent him away, and she followed him, and he burned her feet, and that moment she’d been so mad, she could’ve taken him out right then and there. Except she couldn’t have, because… well, he’d burned her feet. But Katara healed her, and she thought about it, and then suddenly she found herself forgiving him, because she knew what it was like to be blind. To make stupid mistakes because you couldn’t see the way the people around you were able to. And it sucked. 

And then he joined them, and it was really weird, because Katara hated him, and Aaang strangely trusted and respected him, and everyone else was sort of just curious about him, And Toph didn’t know him at all, except she knew him perfectly: a runaway rich kid with a messed up family, desperate to make his own choices and do some good with his life. And she started to like him. Which just wasn’t something Toph did. 

The gang had become a part of her life by necessity, because hey, being with them was better than being with her parents. And they’d made her crazy, made her want to rip her eyes out and stomp them into the ground. And then one day, Sokka was corned by some thief in a market, and of course he was able to handle himself, and he got away easily. He didn’t fight back, no need to cause a scene, alert everyone where the Avatar was. But in that moment, Toph realized that if that pathetic scumbag laid one hand on him or Katara or Aang, she’d make him wish he was never born. 

That’s how she made friends. Aggressively. It was all or nothing. She didn’t just start to like people. But with Zuko she did.

During the days they spent in the Air temples, she noticed things about him. That he had a nice voice. A unique voice. It was rough, but smooth. Like flat pieces of shale rock grinding against each other. She liked when people had voices that made them stand out. Sometimes people shouted from far away, too far to identify them by their forms alone. A unique voice helped.

She noticed how he got when he talked about his uncle. And he talked about his uncle a lot. Badly retelling his jokes, sharing the old man’s tea brewing secrets. His heart rate got all messed up, and his voice faltered a bit, and she felt all these different feelings. Guilt, love, confusion, pain, fear. It was nice to know that someone as stoic as her could sometimes feel as deeply as her too. Not that she really cared about all that mushy stuff. But still. Plus, she liked Iroh. She thought he was a good listener, and she knew he’d been a good parent. 

There were other things too: that he needed to be the best. Zuko would not rest until he’d become the world’s most powerful firebender, helped trained history’s greatest Avatar, and maybe one day even become the people’s most beloved Firelord. He had something to prove, not just to the world, but to himself. Toph got that. Plus, he was tough. And Toph got that too.

She didn’t have a crush on him. She’d thought she’d had a crush on him, for like, a day. But she didn’t. She’d had a crush on Sokka, but obviously that didn’t work out. And she’d had a crush on a boy she met when they passed through Senlin village. He’d kissed her cheek out of the blue at some festival they were at, so she’d punched his nose. When he didn’t scream or cry or run off like a baby, she decided she liked him. All or nothing. Katara healed his nose without asking questions. 

But it didn’t feel like it had with Sokka, or with Jian-Heng. So she knew it wasn’t a crush. She just felt sort of connected to him. Like she understood him. And it was really irritating to feel like that about a person who she barely ever talked to, and whose face she’d never even seen. And it shouldn’t have bothered her, in fact, she shouldn’t have even been wasting her time thinking about it, because that’s just not what she did. But it did bother her, and she did waste her time thinking about it, and it was all stupid and annoying and made her want to punch something.

She brought his hair up once. He hadn’t wanted to travel a certain path, scared of being recognized. She’d snapped that blind or not, no one would recognize his face from behind the ostrich-horse mane that covered it. She’d felt uncomfortable once she said it. Toph never felt uncomfortable.

They were on Ember Island when it first happened. The day was hot, and the constant flow of fire being channeled by Aang and Zuko was even hotter. Zuko’d been training Aang for a while now. She was on the side with the others, watching one of their first attempted at a fire duel. She couldn’t actually see the fire itself, but she could see their movements, and predict what they implied. Aang’s technique had definately gotten better, more confident. The kid could actually put up a decent fight. 

And then, after about a half hour, Zuko’s rocky voices calmly announced, “enough,” which was crazy because he was never the one to end a training session. Usually he worked Aang until the poor guy was desperately begging for a break. But this time he called it off, and they bowed to each other, and Katara was already running over to congratulate Aang, and Sokka was smiling and laughing, almost in relief, as if he suddenly thought they might just stand a chance at winning this war. And she slowly meandered over to give Twinkle-toes a solid thump on the back, as Aang shouted out to ask Appa what he’d thought of the match, and Zuko toweled off his sweaty face.

That was the exact moment when she saw it. Rubbing the towel against his forehead, he’d pushed most of the hair out of his face, the sweat making it stick up in thick, messy clumps. 

His ear. Zuko’s ear wasn't right. It was smaller than the other one, and the shape was wrong. Zuko was deaf.

At least, deaf in his left ear. He couldn't really be completely deaf. She'd heard him have conversations, after all, and she doubted that his fire could be used to make up for hearing. (That'd be way too cool, even for her.) But still! There was no way he could hear with that ear. No frickin way. Not if he was born with a deformation like that. 

So that was why she felt like she understood him. Because he understood her, even if she hadn't know it.

Zuko was actually someone who could get it. Who could get what she dealt with. 

Zuko was like her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I was always really curious as to how Toph would perceive Zuko - maybe she'd be awesome for him because she'd be the one person who didn't look at him and immediately see his scars, but then, what if she noticed his ear and thought that it was a totally different deformity. Or something else entirely! Ahhh, so many options!!! I loved getting to explore my interpretation here, and see how it will affect things. Comments are always appreciated! I'd love to know what you guys think, because I think the effects of her blindness within the show are such a cool concept, and with two tempers as fiery and insecure as Zuko's and Toph's, this could really go in a million directions. Thanks!
> 
> -Ebony


End file.
